


a love poem that you used to know by heart

by costsofregret



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Season/Series Finale, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/costsofregret/pseuds/costsofregret
Summary: A glimpse into the days leading up to an old Sam sitting in the Impala.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	a love poem that you used to know by heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a line from the Billy Collins's poem "Forgetfulness."   
> This is my headcanon for a part of Sam's life story in the series finale.

“It has floated away down a dark mythological river  
Whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,  
Well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those  
Who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night  
To look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.  
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted  
Out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.”

-Forgetfulness, Billy Collins

It started with little things, as these stories often do. Forgotten keys. Meandering strolls through a crowded store with a half full basket of miscellany. Walking into rooms for items needed only a moment before but now. . .Now becomes then. Then becomes now. And these little things are so easy to ignore. Fragments of fragments until one day they start to slot together, gather their broken selves into a warning, then an alarm, and finally, the door to the doctor’s office stands open, the starched white coat mixing with some ancient mourning costume in the mind. Stethoscope is scythe. A ragged heartbeat is the ticking of time moving slowly away. 

“You know what this means?” The doctor inquires quietly, softly, with a hint of sad condescension, as if he is a child who needs consolation. 

Yes, he says, bending up even as his popping spine protests, trying to push him back down. Gravity demands its daily bows. Yes, he says again, yes. 

“Have you talked to Dean?” The doctor calls his son by name, which he stiffens against. You, he wants to say, have no right to such familiarity. But he doesn’t. Dean had recommended him, an old friend from college who specialized in the brains of the old, the bodies of the used. A junk man with a doctorate. Dean had told him some sad story about how a grandparent was lost to the maze of the mind, beloved to this boy-man who now deals out his own kind of demon deals. 

Every profession has an origin story.

He doesn’t answer the doctor. Instead he asks the mundane questions. What are the next steps? What should he expect? How long? The other questions, the morbid ones, echo inside each tilt of his head. When will I lose my mind? When will I forget to feed myself? When will I wander into traffic? When will I forget my son’s name? And the most selfish question, the one always deep inside him, the most anguished loss of loss, when will I forget my brother? 

For long moments, after he’s left the office, he sits in his car afraid to turn the key. He looks up and around. The world slightly blurred by the curve of glass and blocked by the glare of the early spring sun. 

“Call Dean, please.” The doctor implored as he handed Sam the prescriptions and brochures. His hand clenched around the glossy paper and he nodded abruptly. He now sat in the car with the crumpled paper. He picked the prescriptions out carefully and flattened them. He stared at the brochures. The top one had a smiling old man sitting on the edge of a hospital bed that is decorated to hide its despair. Cosmetic and cheap and all the things he lived his life against, and yet, here he is. 

“Living with Alzheimer’s” it declared in blocked font. 

He let the brochures fall from his hand and wedge themselves in the seat cushion. He shook his head and started the car. Home. He just needed to get there. 

Life takes over for a bit. The first mow of the year after a particularly mild winter. The semi-annual pest control visit. The random call from an old hunter acquaintance who needed insight about wendigos. The Sunday phone call with Dean and his fiancée. 

But those small things. Those small things get bigger and bigger. They grow longer and harder to ignore. They tell him a story that he doesn’t want to hear until one day he’s standing in his driveway, one sock on, one foot bare, yelling at memories. His neighbors rush out to help, but he can’t tell if they are demons, vampires, or witches. He chants Latin at a young married couple with a newborn, hoping to chase the evil away, warns of yellow eyes and black souls. He’s drowning in a dead language when he finally resurfaces.

He stands at the center of a séance, their worried gazes invoking him into being. Their scared eyes rock him back into place. Slowly they approach him. One by one they soothe and console and walk him into the house. Bob, the retired marine, sets the coffee to brew. Maggie, his wife, fluffs pillows and folds cloth. Davey, the young lawyer, finds his sock in the hallway and brings it to him. Jennie, the nurse, helps him put on a sweater and find his glasses. She caresses his cheek and asks him where his medications are. Her soft voice carries the weight of her work. Time passes and one by one they leave. Jennie hangs back. She found the crumpled-up brochures on his nightstand, near the medications. 

“Does Dean know?” He has to fight the urge to ask which one. But she wouldn’t get the joke. Everyone who would’ve gotten the joke was dead now.

“I haven’t told him.” Sam is certain that Dean suspects. It’s why he recommended the barely graduated doctor with the tragic grandparent story. But no, they hadn’t discussed it. Dean knew Sam’s boundaries. He raised him to respect those border walls. 

“You need to.” She pats his hand and leaves him. Alone. He’s been alone for a long time but in that moment, after the door clicked behind her, he felt it rush through him and there was fear beside the loneliness. Even when he had people around, he’d always felt the loneliness, but he was able to control it, live with it, and even sometimes, embrace it. The only times in his life he didn’t feel it were . . . he stops himself. He pulls his hands across his face, his fingernail catching on his glass frame. 

“Dean.” He picks up the phone. He stares at the lit screen for a long time. He wants to call him. He wants to. Yet. Yet he knows what happens next. The phone call will begin the story. A father goes missing and the son must rush to find him, save him. It’s the story of their bloodline, the curse they carried. 

He places the phone carefully on the side table as he walks through the house. He grabs the keys from the small hook near the back door. One key for the door. One key for the lock. One key for the car. He stands outside the garage and inhales deeply, hoping to catch the fragrance of leather, beer, and charm. He opens the door slowly. The tarp is dust-laden, protecting the black paint and polish from age and decay. He pulls it off quickly, smoothly, years of practice at uncovering her. She was comfort and warmth and family. He laughs at himself as he feels the urge to take the passenger side. His rightful place. 

He needed someone to drive him through this. He ached for the driver, for the road, for the unknown ahead and not the forgotten behind. When he was gone, she would have no one to care for her, to tell the story of her scars. When he was gone, she would be orphaned.

He bends his protesting body into the driver’s seat. He wants that youth again, that boy who loved the car, the road, and him, yes him, more than anything else in the world. He lays his glasses to the side and again inhales, hoping to catch the lingering scent of home but he only sensed the dust and the dirt and the humidity of capture. It wasn’t home. 

“Dean.”

No one answered. 

“Dean. I’m sorry.” He lays his head on the wheel. “I’m so sorry.”


End file.
